Dawn Chiang Brings “Beautiful” to Life at Geva Theatre

Adapting a Broadway-Caliber Design with Chroma-Q Color Force II

 

In transferring the Pioneer Theatre Company’s production of Beautiful: The Carol King Musical from Salt Lake City to Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, NY, Lighting Designer Dawn Chiang had to adapt her design to incorporate different lighting fixtures - specifically, the Chroma-Q Color Force II 72s in Geva’s inventory.

“That required significant reprogramming, prompting Chiang to set up a half day in NYC to spend some quality time with a Color Force II fixture provided by AC Americas (formerly A.C. Lighting).”

In total, Chiang guessed she’d have to reprogram roughly 35 color palettes for Beautiful’s 35 scenes and 30 musical numbers. “But when I went back into the show file, there were 65 I’d created to articulate each moment, each scene, each shift in the music.” She credits the flexibility of the Color Force IIs for making the job less intensive than it might have been. “Having worked with Color Force before, I knew creating the colors I wanted would be straightforward.”

“Every LED fixture type is different. So, as a designer, I always play to the strength of a particular fixture. The RGBA colors are especially vibrant and bright on the Color Force II. And it was interesting to program them side by side with the fixtures we’d used in Utah." In comparison, she notes: "The Color Force II's RGBA parts of the spectrum, they're off the charts.”

“I wanted to match the colors as much as possible as a starting point, but I knew there would be a different quality, and sometimes not an exact match on the colors, but the great majority of colors I was able to replicate. A handful are going to be different, but that's okay because there are so many different aspects to the Color Force II I can lean into once I put the whole picture up on the stage.”

Heading into tech for Beautiful, Chiang expected to be able to leverage the Color Force II’s features and flexibility to provide a different and perhaps larger range of colors, which is sure to be a benefit given the demands of the show and the need to reflect such a wide range of moods and settings.

"That's how I ended up with 65 different color palettes - there’s a lot of contrast from one moment to the next, but also subtle shifts. And I can achieve a lot of nuance and range with these fixtures. That's what's so delightful about using them. And AC Americas (Lighting) was incredibly responsive, receptive, and helpful, for which I'm very grateful.”

At Geva, given the physical layout of the show and the different elements in place, “It's going to be its own animal. But, with the Color Force II, I have a powerful tool to adjust to this new setting, and I have complete confidence with that tool at hand for the cyc, I’ll be able to craft that on the fly.” That’s critical, Chiang adds. “It's a big show. There's a limited amount of time, but I know I can work quickly with the Color Force IIs.”

We followed up with Chiang after the first couple of performances to see how everything was going and how what she previously pointed to as the benefits of the Color Force II played out in practice…

Again, she cites the fixture’s flexibility as extremely helpful and the benefits of how powerful and bright the Color Force IIs are in the RGBA spectrum. “I was able to push some of the looks more because we had the capacity and the firepower to, which was great, but, also, at a few moments, I throttled what was at ‘full’ down to 90% because we didn't need as much intensity. Still, when the moment called for it, I could push the fixture to (achieve) more saturated, intense looks to support the songs, which was great. It’s like the Color Force II go to 11,” she adds, laughing.

Granted, that's not always necessary or desired. “On some songs, the lights from the top of the cyc might be a deep red/orange, and below, from the bottom, a more medium tone, and I can get a more distinct striation of color with Color Force, because of the ability to saturate very deeply and also be able to pull back to a more medium value and get those beautiful looks you don't get any place else.”

In all, there are 18 Color Force II 72 fixtures used to light Beautiful's Cyc (9 for the top and 9 for the bottom). “That’s what Geva Theatre owns, which is fantastic. "That half-day I spent reprogramming in NYC turned out to be rock solid going into the Geva production. The colors were great. I had to tweak – out of 65 or more different colors, two colors a little bit.” One, she adds,” to differentiate the light color from a costume one actor was wearing."

Unsurprisingly, given the source material, Beautiful is a highly popular show. “It's a knockout," Chiang concludes. "There's a woman who saw the first performance and loved it so much she came back the second night to see the show again. Another woman saw it for the first time with her husband and said she’d be coming back with her daughter, so a lot of repeat audience members; it's that enthusiastic an audience.”